New FAA NOTAM system: more than a name
April 22, 2025
The FAA has announced it is to deploy a new Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) system this year, “much earlier than originally planned,” and part of an overarching plan it says will modernise the US’ ageing air traffic control system.
Using what it described as a “streamlined, innovative vendor challenge to cut through red tape to get this critical work done as fast as possible,” the FAA intends to adopt a cloud-based system to “provide near-time data exchange, enabling efficient dataflows and better stakeholder collaboration”.
IT service management company CGI Federal has been chosen to modernise and deploy the new NOTAM system. Initial work will be completed by July, with the FAA targeting the service to be operational by September.
In particular, the “scalable and resilient architecture” of the proposed system will aim to address the “fragility” of the current system, as demonstrated by a major NOTAM system outage in January 2023. This, explained the FAA,
“Over the last years, we’ve seen multiple system outages ground regional air travel, create extensive delays, and otherwise ruin the flying experience for the American people,” said US transportation secretary Sean Duffy. “It’s time our technology enters the 21st century. NOTAM modernisation is the first step”. Around four million NOTAMs are issued annually, communicating temporary changes such as airspace restrictions and runway closures to pilots and flight planners.
In February 2025, the incoming Trump administration changed the nomenclature of the acronym NOTAM back to ‘Airmen’ from ‘Air Missions,’ effectively undoing a 2021 directive from the previous Biden government that aimed to be “inclusive of all aviators and mission”. At the time, Duffy said the move was “in line with [his] commitment to restoring sanity” to the US Department of Transport, and although some opinions were divided on the importance of either phrase, the name change had no operational effect to the NOTAM system.
